West Ham are more than ready for the Chelsea challenge on Boxing Day after a phenominal first half to the season.

The victory over Leicester City will have given the team to go into the two London derbies ready to express themselves.

And the West Ham boss Sam Allardyce – talking to the national press – said:  “We will challenge Chelsea and Arsenal on the back of what we’ve done up to now, which eases the pressure on us.

“We’ve earned the right to do that and the lads are confident they may have the capabilities to get something from those games.

“But if we don’t it won’t be too much of a knockback for us because we know we can catch up by beating teams below us, like Leicester, which we have done particularly well this year.

“The cream on the cake up to now is the fact that we’ve beaten Manchester City here and beaten Liverpool here. So hopefully we can get something out of the Chelsea and Arsenal games.

“If not, we get back to the fact that we know other teams will come here and want to stifle us because of our position. But if we can beat those teams we catch up again and get back up to where we are.”

And speaking for the players left back Aaron Cresswell added: We are full of confidence and looking to take three points off any team.

“Chelsea look like they’re going to win the league this year and Arsenal are a very good team.

“But we won’t go there to sit back and try to defend. We’ll look to go and attack them.

“Andy has got a goal with a great finish and could have scored another one earlier on. Diafra Sakho has scored eight goals in 12 games, so things are looking good.”